Critique on Tom Campbell's column on vouchers

On November 29, 2024, Tom Campbell of NC SPIN stated these “15 Reasons to Oppose Private School Vouchers.” My response is as follows.

1.         Vouchers divert funding from district schools, funding already insufficient.

Opportunity Scholarships do not divert funding from public district schools. In the vast majority of cases, the amount of funding per student provided by state and county taxpayers at district public schools is significantly greater than the Opportunity Scholarship. Savings to the state and county for students who are no longer educated in district schools outweigh expenses.

Whether current funding for district schools is insufficient is a matter for the General Assembly and the courts.

2.         Private schools can pick and choose whom they admit.

Private schools accepting Opportunity Scholarships may not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Almost all public and private universities also pick and choose whom they admit.

3.         Private schools do not have to accept or offer help to special needs children.

Children with special needs have a separate source of state help. These Disability Grants (ESA+) are fully appropriated for the 2024-2025 school year. Some private schools do not have the expertise to adequately serve children with special needs. Many private schools do accept children with special needs.

Special needs education can be very expensive. Private schools accepting children with special needs can also accept Opportunity Scholarships for these children. Depending on the type of special need and the parents’ choices, the yearly combined amount of help can be $4,500, $9,000, $17,000, or $24,000 for the education of a child with special needs.

4.         Private schools do not have to provide transportation to and from school, nor meals, automatically eliminating many students who require one or both.

Lack of provision by the school of transportation or meals does not eliminate anyone. Parents with lower incomes have all or almost all of their entire tuition and fees covered by the Opportunity Scholarships.

Many private schools do provide transportation. But even district public schools have only half of their students arrive by bus. Many families prefer to make their own transportation arrangements. It saves their children wasted hours on the bus, as well as sparing them from bullying and exposure to vulgar or profane language that is so common.

5.         Private schools aren’t required to have licensed teachers.

            Academic studies have repeatedly shown that certification of teachers is no guarantee of quality. Lack of certification is no indication of lack of quality. Remember Governor Jim Martin? He taught at Davidson but was not certified to teach in district schools. After 48 years of law practice, I will be teaching this winter an advanced civics class, including law, government, economics and tax policy, at private high schools.

            Most objectors also cite the lack of accreditation. Many private schools are accredited. But most K-12 schools, public and private, are not accredited. In Leandro, Judge Manning found that 43 public high schools, all accredited, were committing “academic genocide.”

6.         Private schools can choose their own curricula and textbooks.

True. This is one good reason that many parents choose private schools.

7.         The majority of private schools are owned or sponsored by religious organizations. Religious instruction is mandated in many of them.

Most private schools that are owned or sponsored by churches or other religious organizations include classes on the Bible or other similar instruction. That is why many parents choose religious schools for their children. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton were all founded to provide religious instruction.

The North Carolina Constitution, Article IX EDUCATION, Section 1.  Education encouraged. states:

“Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools, libraries, and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

While 2/3 of my education was in public schools, the daily classes on the Bible in secondary school did not impede me at all in higher education.

8.         Private schools are not required to adhere to the legislatively approved school calendar, number of required instruction days nor length of each school day.

Private schools, whether or not they accept Opportunity Scholarships, are required to be in session 180 days a year. Attendance records are open to inspection by the Governor’s representative.

9.         They lack transparency and accountability, being exempt from most rules and regulations public schools are required to follow.

            Private schools are transparent to parents and to their own governing bodies. They are accountable to NCSEAA within its jurisdiction, and to the Governor within his jurisdiction.      See 10. below.

            District public schools also protect the privacy of their students. Accountability of district public schools is problematic when a minority of district public schools receive Grade A on scorecards based on academic progress and proficiency.

10.       Private schools are required to annually test students to learn how they are performing; however, they can choose what tests they administer and are not required to report student results. Other states are learning that student performance actually declined after students transferred from public schools.

Private schools’ test results, whether or not they accept Opportunity Scholarships, are open to the governor’s representative and are also may be accessed by the courts in domestic disputes and cases of child neglect or abuse.

Private schools must administer nationally normed tests, not the homegrown EOGs that district schools use. Private schools that accept Opportunity Scholarships do report test scores to parents and report graduation rate to NC State Education Assistance Authority.

11.       Vouchers don’t cover the full cost of tuition. The average cost of private school tuition is $10,442 in North Carolina. Voucher payments are scaled according to family income, but the most a student can receive is $7,468. Families are obligated to make up the difference.

Opportunity Scholarships were never designed to cover the full cost of tuition and fees at every private school. In Wake County, the very best private schools academically are Thales Academies. Thales charges $6,900 annually for grades 6-12 and $6,500 for K-5. The average cost at the 80+ schools of the NC Christian School Association is $6,100, quite reasonable. Opportunity Scholarships are sufficient for their students.

Schools that charge more than that often do not accept Opportunity Scholarships. Those that do often provide scholarships for the difference. Families that pay the difference do so only if they choose a school that requires it.

12.       Vouchers are being given to students who were already enrolled in private schools.

One of the defects of the program early on was that, for fiscal reasons after the Great Recession, Opportunity Scholarships were only granted if the student switched from public to private school. Parents of these children earn average income, at best, and had scrimped and saved for years until 2024, when this reform was finally possible.

13.       Vouchers increase segregation. Most private school enrollments are disproportionately white when compared to the community or county in which they are located.

The first sentence is not true. From the inception of the program for several years, the greatest number of recipients were minorities leaving majority-minority public schools to go to majority-white private schools. This reduced segregation in both private schools and in district public schools.

There is no data to justify the second sentence. It is probably not true. I had the privilege of representing 33 private Christian schools who were being forced by an attorney for the Left to provide data to “prove discrimination.” All but one of the 33 schools were thoroughly integrated and welcoming to students of all races, colors, and national origins. One of the 33 schools was almost completely black, but the students were coming from almost all black public district schools.

In a survey of private school administrators, conducted by the Friday Institute and researchers at NC State University, most were very aware and appreciative that Opportunity Scholarships made possible more diversity of students.

14.       If the goal of vouchers is to “ensure every child has a chance to thrive,” there are many children being discriminated against because they don’t live in a county or community where private schools are available. They don’t have school choice.

They have more choice now than they did without these new Opportunity Scholarships. In a year or three, these counties – rural in the east or far west – will see “100 flowers bloom.” Rome wasn’t built in a day.

15.       Vouchers to private schools violate a longstanding state policy of giving public funds to private institutions.

There is no such longstanding state policy.  Equivalents have been given to students at pre-K (Smart Start) for the last 30 years. Grants have been given to private religious colleges and more at universities for 53 years. NC Session Laws 1971-392. In 1796, the General Assembly appropriated money to a private school, and it did so again in 1805 and 1809.

For further information, contact

Paul Stam at paulstam@stamlawfirm.com

Jason Haas at info@nccsa.org  North Carolina Christian School Association

Brian Jodice at brian@pefnc.org  Partners for Educational Freedom in North Carolina

Bob Luebke at bluebke@lockehq.org Locke Foundation Center for Effective Education

Paul “Skip” Stam practices real estate and state constitutional law. He served 16 years in the NC House, the last 10 years as Speaker Pro Tem.